The Churchill Series - Aug. 11, 2006

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

I promised yesterday to illustrate Churchill's loyalty to friends with a story about his care for a person he never would have called a "friend" but whose service to Churchill placed him within a special category that included his friends to whom he was intensely loyal.

The person is Walter Thompson, for many years Churchill principal bodyguard.

In the early 30s Churchill learned that Thompson, who first became his bodyguard about 10 years before, had not been promoted in all that time by Scotland Yard. Wasn't that unusual, Churchill asked Thompson? What explained that?

Thompson feigned ignorance.

But Churchill wasn't to be put off. He pursued his questions with the Yard. He learned that Thompson had sat for promotion exams and done exceedingly well. But he lacked the range of experience an officer was expected to have for promotion. His years had been spent protecting Churchill.

This was all news to Churchill, although Thompson was well aware of why he hadn't been promoted. But as Thompson explained to his wife, Churchill was a great man who might some day be called upon to save the country. It was a privilege and duty to guard him.

For his part, once Churchill learned of the reason Thompson had failed of promotion, he began a two year campaign to reverse matters. It’s difficult to get a large organization to change or override policy, especially a policy that has some sense to it. Surely before a Scotland Yard officer is promoted he or she ought to do more than just bodyguard work.

But Churchill didn't want Thompson and his family to suffer any more on his account than they were doing already with Thompson's strange hours, frequent long trips away from home, and always dangerous work.

Churchill wrote letters, requested and was granted interviews with the Yard's top executives, and had an occasional "word" with people in the Home Office to which Scotland Yard reports. All of this was unknown to Thompson.

How did it all come out?

At the end of two years, Thompson became Detective-Sergeant and eventually a Detective-Inspector.

Thompson retired from the Yard in the late 30s and opened a grocery business. But the day after Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, he received a call from Churchill.

Thompson rejoined the Yard, and from then until the end of the war he resumed guarding the man whose destiny he foresaw and whose life he felt he was privileged to protect.
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The material in this post is drawn from Tom Hickman's Churchill's Bodyguard.